


Falling For You

by Everren



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben was arrested, Consensual Underage Sex, F/M, Inspired by Music, Kissing, Outdoor Sex, POV Rey (Star Wars), Past Violence, Rey and Ben are both 17, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:20:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24838333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everren/pseuds/Everren
Summary: Rey doesn't have much of a social life. Between school, studying and managing to hold down two jobs, the only time she ever has for herself is in the small, quiet hours of the morning, when she collapses, exhausted, into bed. However, one night, her peace is interrupted by Ben Solo, the boy she used to tutor, the boy she'd last seen being led out of school in handcuffs.With his deep, searching gaze and cutting, inescapable honesty, he forces her to challenge her own beliefs in ways she'd never expected. Now she's left with one question: can one night change everything?Inspired by ‘Fallingforyou’ by The 1975.Part of the Reylo Jukebox Exchange.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24
Collections: Reylo Jukebox Exchange





	Falling For You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrincesaSolo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincesaSolo/gifts).



> Happy World Music Day, everybody!
> 
> This story was inspired by the song Fallingforyou by The 1975, prompted by @ReyloFanfickers on Twitter. Listen here: https://youtu.be/W3JJxS0gNkE
> 
> As soon as I heard the song, I could picture the incredible, outdoors setting, and this little High School AU popped into my head. So thank you for prompting with such an evocative song, @ReyloFanfickers! 
> 
> I was hoping to have this completed in time to post it all as a single, long oneshot, but the word count got away from me, so Part Two will follow as soon as I have it finished. Thank you for your patience in the meantime. ❤️
> 
> Big thanks to [Bea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niennathegrey/profile) and [Venetum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venetum/profile) for beta reading for me, not to mention all the friends who have cheered me on along the way.
> 
>   
> 

It was late. The light from Rey’s little reading lamp strewed its orange glow across the textbooks and notepads laying open on her desk. A half-drunk, stone-cold cup of coffee sat forgotten on a stained and battered coaster next to her borrowed copy of _Glencoe Geometry_ , which was spreadeagled to a page on vectors. Rey let out a yawn and absently rubbed at her left eye as she scrawled a quick note on the page in front of her. It was more than half covered with her scribbles, arrows and graph doodles — anything that would make the concepts of magnitude and direction stick. 

Late night study sessions weren’t uncommon for Rey. By the time she got back from her after-school job at Plutt’s junk yard, and had a chance to eat something, it was usually after nine o’clock by the time she could sit down with her books and her coffee at the small desk in the little box room she inhabited and put her mind to schoolwork. She’d grown used to studying into the early hours before collapsing into her narrow, single bed and sinking into an exhausted, dreamless sleep, waking at six AM to repeat the whole cycle again.

It had to be getting close to time for that now, if the heaviness in her eyelids and the unfocused fluttering of her mind was anything to judge by. She reached out a hand to tap the chipped and scratched screen of her phone. It immediately glowed brilliantly, the lock screen image illuminating her face from beneath with the cool, blue tones of a cloudless sky dotted with jewel-coloured hot-air balloons. The digital clock display read 00:34. 

If it hadn’t been Thursday (or Friday now, she supposed), if she didn’t already have three late nights under her belt that week or Algebra 2 looming first thing in the morning, she probably would have pushed for another hour. As it was, she gathered her open books towards her, carefully dog-earing the relevant worn and creased page in each, before cramming them back into the canvas satchel she used to ferry them back and forth to school.

She let out a long, deep sigh when she stood, feeling her bones creak as she stretched her arms up above her head, her body unfurling gladly after the three stationary hours hunched over her desk. 

Her pajamas — calf-length, light grey leggings and an white, oversized, ‘Girl Power’ t-shirt — were lying in a crumpled pile, peeking out from beneath her duvet cover where she’d tried to conceal them that morning in an attempt at tidiness. She pulled them out now and gave them a little flutter to try to dislodge some of the creases, turning to pad out to the bathroom across the landing. Her hand was on her bedroom door handle when she heard the little tap at her window. 

It was an innocuous sound, almost quiet enough to be dismissed, ignored and forgotten, but it was followed quickly by another, then two more. Rey frowned and edged her way back through the narrow channel between desk and bed towards the window at the opposite end of the room. Her curtains were still open, sharing the glow from her reading lamp with the deep indigo sky outside. As she watched, her eyes warily skittering back and forth across the glass, she saw something small, round and grey flash quickly in front of the PVC-framed night sky before striking the pane with a gentle crack.

Her pajamas were quickly discarded on top of the duvet as she rushed across to the window and peered outside. A frown niggled her forehead into lines as she scoured the black lawn below and the inky tangle of chokeberry bushes which bordered her foster mother’s front yard. The glare from her lamp was reflecting back at her off of the glass, rendering it nearly impossible to make out any distinguishable shapes, but a movement in the rosebed immediately beneath her window made her freeze. Quickly, she leaned across her desk and snapped off the light, before straightening up and peering back down.

A long, pale face materialised out of the darkness, wraithlike in the moonlight. A gasp made its way out past Rey’s lips before recognition began to sink in: the familiar jaw, lightly dusted with hair, jutting forward as its owner craned up at her; the long nose and dark eyebrows, dividing the face into uneven quadrants; the moles flecked like stars across the cheeks and forehead, remembered rather than seen at this distance and with so little light. Rey’s frown deepened, her nose wrinkling in confusion. 

What on earth was Ben Solo doing standing in her foster mother’s rosebed after midnight on a Thursday night?

Below, Ben drew a hand out of the enveloping darkness of whatever he was wearing — a black hoodie, judging by the two white cords hanging down his front, which stood out like fluorescent strips in the moonlight — and beckoned for her to come down to him. Common sense told her to flip him off and close the curtains, like she should have done hours ago, but something, whether it was the fog of tiredness clouding her brain or just sheer curiosity, made her pause. What on earth _was_ Ben Solo doing standing in her foster mother’s rosebed after midnight on a Thursday night, throwing stones at her window?

She huffed and rolled her eyes, not that he would be able to see it from where he stood, then stepped back from the window and looked around her dark room for her tattered plimsolls, which she’d shucked off as soon as she’d got in that evening. They were lying haphazardly on the rug near the foot of her bed. She shoved her feet roughly into them, leaning down to pull the backs up over her heels with a finger, then grabbed her phone and slipped out of her room onto the deserted landing. 

Maz’s bedroom door was closed and the chink beneath, where the white-glossed wood didn’t quite meet the carpet, was dark, save for the occasional flicker of light, no doubt from the ancient, boxy television Maz kept on top of her dresser which seemed to keep her company through the night. Rey stepped quietly as she moved along the hallway and down the stairs, the carpet muffling the sound of her footsteps. Her grey, woven wool coat was hanging on its hook near the front door and she pulled it on before slowly picking up her keys from the hall table and placing them carefully, noiselessly, into her coat pocket. 

Getting out of the front door would have been impossible. Maz’s home was her castle and the three locks and two deadbolts, which were diligently fastened every evening before Maz went to bed, probably made it as secure as one. The kitchen door, however, was more modern and guarded by a single standard locking system.

Rey found the key in the bowl on the work surface and slipped it into the lock before twisting it as slowly and quietly as she could. Even so, the click of the levers shifting into alignment rang out through the dark kitchen like a gunshot and Rey winced, frozen to the spot, waiting for the sound of small, agile feet moving across the floorboards above and the inevitable discovery which would follow.

They didn’t come. 

Letting out a breath, she slipped the key back into its normal place before easing down on the door handle to let herself out. 

The night was cool, but not unseasonably so. The warmth of the Spring day had dissipated in the hours since sunset, but the smell of sunshine and the first wisteria blooms of the year still lingered. Rey pressed the back door softly shut behind her before using the key on her own set to secure it, then quickly descended the back porch steps and slipped down the side of the house towards where Ben had been skulking amongst the roses. 

The grass was already damp with dew and it soaked into the canvas material of her plimsolls as she went. She slowed as she approached the front of the house, eyes scouring the shadows close to the wall beneath her window until she saw Ben’s dark, hulking outline. He turned when he sensed her approaching and she realised from the startled expression on his face that he had been expecting her to come from the front. 

Well, good, she thought, it served him right to be startled. His little stunt with the stones at her window had made her heart beat in her throat for a long minute.

“What do you want?” Rey hissed, stopping a few feet away from him and crossing the two front panels of her coat over each other, careful to keep the worn, white soles of her plimsolls out of the mud of the rosebed. 

Ben’s hands had been hidden deep in the pockets of a dark denim jacket which blended in above the faded black of his jeans, but he reached up with one massive, ghostly white hand when she spoke and pulled down his hood as he stepped out from among the bushes to join her on the grass. Rey could see him much more clearly now that there wasn’t a pane of glass and several meters separating them. He was wearing a hoodie, like she’d guessed, but it was dark grey rather than black. She could tell by the way it contrasted slightly with his ebony hair, which flopped across his forehead once it was released from beneath his hood, in that gentle swoop which had always made her stomach feel weightless when she’d found herself gazing at it across their desk in the Tutor Centre. 

“I came to see if you wanted to hang out,” he replied after a long moment, his deep voice a quiet rumble like far-off thunder.

“What, _now_?” Rey asked incredulously.

Ben looked bemused. “Sure. Why not?”

“It’s nearly one in the morning.”

“Right,” he said after a moment, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Does that mean you don’t want to?”

Rey studied his face for any sign that this was his idea of a joke. In all the weeks they’d had to work together at school, she’d always taken him as someone serious, with a dry, intellectual, slightly morbid sense of humour, not one for pranks or elaborate set-ups which involved turning up outside someone’s bedroom window in the early hours of the morning and asking if they wanted to hang out. She knew she didn’t know him well, but her early years, flitting back and forth between groups homes and various different foster families, had taught her how to get a good read on people quickly. She’d learnt to trust her instincts, and her instincts (along with the intense earnestness he broadcasted with those big, dark eyes, irises almost black in the gloom) were telling her that he was being serious. 

“I didn’t say that,” she relented, wrapping her arms tighter around herself as she weighed her options. It was a bad idea, that much was obvious. She had been about to go to bed. She had school in a little over seven hours, she was still wearing the same wrinkled clothes she’d had on since that morning and then there was Maz. She turned her head and glanced back up at the house, still blessedly dark and quiet.

“Fine,” she agreed, making her decision. She turned back to him, feeling her heart rate pick up a beat within her chest. “We can hang out, but not for long, okay? I’ve got school in the morning.”

A shadow of pain, regret… something, flickered across Ben’s face for a moment before it was gone. He nodded, then motioned for her to follow him as he loped away, past the roses and the front porch steps, heading towards the gap in the black thicket of chokeberry bushes where Rey knew Maz’s front gate was. Rey watched him go for a moment, confusion still painted behind her wary eyes, before taking a deep breath and following. 

The little lane outside the front yard was deserted. It was always deserted. Maz lived right on the edge of town, where the neat suburban streets became wilder and less ordered, as though the surrounding forest was trying to reclaim what had once rightfully belonged to it. When Rey stepped out through the gate, shutting it quietly behind her, Ben was already in the process of picking up his black mountain bike from where he must have left it, lying in a heap at the edge of the road. She’d seen him with the bicycle at school, sitting idly on the seat with his too-long legs propping the thing upright, the handlebars and front wheel hanging limply askew, while he and his friends smoked cigarettes round by the dumpsters. From this distance, even in the dim light borrowed from the night sky and the street lamp at the end of the road, she could see that there were little patches of red detailing on the frame and wheels which she hadn’t noticed before, and the word ‘Silencer’ marked out in blocky, red letters along the crossbar. 

Ben swung one of his long legs over the back of the bike and perched himself on the seat, before inclining his head for Rey to join him. She hung back, hesitating. Where did he want her to sit? He was having a laugh if he thought she was going to balance herself on the handlebars, like in some black and white movie still from the 1950s. 

“On the crossbar,” he grunted, seeing the uncertainty on her face.

Rey let go of the front of her coat and reached for the grey wool belt that wrapped around it instead. It used to have a buckle, but that had fallen off years ago so now she simply tied the ends together around her waist as she moved forward towards Ben. He leaned back on the saddle as she did, making space for her between his wide chest and the handlebars, and kept the bike steady for her with his feet planted firmly on the asphalt to either side of the frame while she pushed up on her tiptoes and slid herself onto the bicycle’s blessedly thick, black top tube. 

She could feel him, warm behind her, and smell the heavy scent of him. She remembered it from their tutoring sessions, that unique, masculine blend of tobacco smoke, fresh sweat, BOSS body spray and spearmint chewing gum. Rey nibbled her lip nervously, shuffling slightly on the crossbar.

“You’re gonna want to hold on,” Ben rumbled, and she felt the vibrations of his deep voice pass out of his chest into the top of her arm nearest him. She darted a quick glance up at his face, wondering whether it might answer her unspoken question, _Hold onto what?_ , but his expression was implacable, his gaze set on the road ahead as he pulled up his hood again. 

Rey decided that the stretch of cold metal towards the centre of the handlebars was as good a bet as any, and her fingers closed tightly around it as she tried to stop herself from slipping backwards down the shallow incline of the top tube. Behind her, she felt Ben leaning forwards. His chest pressed against the back of her shoulders, doing a much more effective job of holding her in place than her attempts had yielded, as his arms caged her in on either side. His hands dwarfed the black, rubber handlebar grips when he took hold of them, and beneath her she heard the gentle clicking of the bicycle chain as he primed a pedal with one giant foot, encased in black Adidas. Rey lifted her tiptoes from the ground just in time as the bike started forward.

They began moving fast at once, quickly picking up speed, powered by Ben’s thick thighs. The lane, with its old, timber construction houses and creaking porch swings, began to blur by, and Rey’s knuckles turned white with the way her fists tightened around the handlebars. She tucked her legs in close to the frame, trying her best to keep them out of the way of Ben’s knee while she held her feet well clear of the front wheel. 

“Where are we going?” she yelled, the wind whipping her words away from her as soon as they left her lips. Ben didn’t answer, just turned the handlebars to take a right at the end of the street. 

The roads were quiet, the houses they sped by all lay dark and dormant. They passed a couple of cars on one of the wider streets, Rey squinting against the glare of their headlights, but soon Ben turned off onto a narrower lane where the sidewalks faded away into grass ditches and the houses grew more and more sparse between the trees which hungrily crowded in around the unfenced yards. Rey didn’t think she’d ever travelled this way out of town before. She couldn’t even guess where the road might end up; it seemed to twist and turn into the black wall of forest up ahead, foiling her attempts at predictive navigation. 

She wasn’t destined to find out, as it transpired. They hadn’t long passed the last house on the street when Ben steered them off of the asphalt and down the grass verge into the embrace of the trees. Rey gasped and held on all the more tightly as the bicycle’s crossbar began bouncing jarringly beneath her. 

One of Ben’s hands came away from its place on the handlebars and, for just a moment, she feverishly wondered whether he was going to wrap his forearm around her, but he didn’t. He just flicked on the little light clipped between her fists then went back to carefully steering them through the tree trunks which loomed out of the darkness in its beam.

Dry twigs cracked beneath them, snapped in two by the bike's wheels. Despite the jolting, Rey realised it was exhilarating, to feel the instinctive way Ben wove them through the trees, his muscles taut and primed to either side of her, reacting with lightning efficiency to each new obstacle the forest presented. He seemed to know where he was going; with every correction of the handlebars, she could sense that he had a destination in mind which he was steering them towards. Sure enough, before too long the cone of forest floor lit up in front of them became laced with old mountain bike tracks, a path beaten over many journeys. Rey wondered whether this was one of the cycle paths which criss-crossed the area and joined up with the hiking trails that wound up from the river valley below, but it seemed too overgrown and wild to be marked on any map. It felt like a secret, which she was being let in on.

The track began leading them uphill. As hard as she clung on to the handlebars, Rey couldn’t stop herself from sliding backwards into Ben’s wide, solid chest, her thigh getting trapped beneath the prow of his seat. It was uncomfortable and she winced as she felt bruises being pressed into her flesh.

“It’s not much further,” Ben rumbled, as though he sensed her discomfort.

Rey managed a quick, “Okay,” as she wriggled, trying to find a better position. 

Above her, she heard Ben’s breathing become more ragged, more laboured, but they didn’t slow. His legs pumped relentlessly up and down to either side of her as he drove them onwards up the incline until, eventually, the ground began to level out. The trees were just as thick here as they had been down below, coming at them out of the dark like great pillars, but, unless Rey was much mistaken, there seemed to be a lightening in the gloom up ahead. Ben steered towards it, finally letting his efforts ease. His feet stilled on the pedals, the bike coasting the rest of the way for him with a soft clicking noise, and then they were emerging into a clearing and—

Oh!

The space was bordered by trees on three sides and littered with tattered, old pieces of furniture: a couple of red leather couches and a matching armchair, their upholstery torn in places, with loose flaps lolling like tongues; a water-stained mattress, raised up on a pair of wooden pallets which were lashed together with blue, nylon rope; a cluster of camo-print, folding camp chairs, dotted around a firepit with a smoke blackened, kettle hanging over it; a big, once-white chest freezer, its power cord trailing limply in the dirt to one side; and a brown and beige food cooler, which looked to Rey like it had been made in the 1970s. However, it was what was beyond the make-shift camp, past where the rocky ridge it sat on dropped away into nothingness, that captured Rey’s breath. 

Hundreds of thousands of stars stretched out into the distance, like a celestial blanket, laid heavy over the dark, muted landscape below. A few clusters of little, orange lights nestled themselves into the far-away bends of the river which snaked below, a twisting ribbon of black silk from up here. Beyond them, a range of steep, forested, mountain slopes reached upwards towards the heavens, their hulking, black peaks picked out against the backdrop of starlight and midnight blue. The moon hung low in the distance, big and round and friendly, spilling its watery glow throughout their clearing and frosting the surrounding pines with silver.

Rey could feel her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide in wonder. Ben brought the bike to a gentle stop just outside the circle of furniture, then shifted a little behind her, letting go of the handlebars with one hand to give her room to move. 

“What is this place?” she asked, the toes of her plimsolls touching down on the earthen floor as she slid gratefully down off of the crossbar. Ben stood up from the bike too, swinging his leg over the back wheel, before letting it topple over to hit the dirt behind him.

“Just somewhere I hang out sometimes,” he replied, following at a distance as Rey made her way around the end of the couch towards the cold ashes of the firepit.

“With your friends?” She glanced back at him over her shoulder just in time to see him nod and push his hood down again.

“Yeah.” 

Rey had never liked Ben’s friends, not the tall, blonde girl who loomed over the rest of the school team when she barked orders on the soccer field, and especially not the weasel-faced, ginger boy who spewed snark behind everyone’s backs. They all had faces which seemed made for sneering, even the quieter, perpetually scared-looking, dark haired boy who hung around with them, and they’d never once spared a civil word for her. She remembered the disdainful way they’d watched her whenever she had to pass them in the corridor at school, like an insect they’d like nothing better than to crush. Only one pair of eyes among them had ever seemed warm: Ben’s. 

Ben’s eyes were deep, whiskey brown and sorrowful. She remembered the few times she’d met his gaze across the parking lot in the time before they’d properly met, the way he’d seemed to peer into her soul. It had sent tingles running down her spine. She felt them now, too, as he watched her exploring the camp.

She lifted her hand and let her fingers drift lightly along the back of one of the camp chairs.

“Do you want something to drink?” Ben asked from behind her, stooping down to prise the lid off of the cooler.

“What have you got?”

“Beer,” he said, then paused. “Only beer, really.”

Rey eyed the open cooler. She knew it wasn’t the best idea, getting drunk in the woods in the early hours of the morning with a guy she barely knew, but it occurred to her that the worst offences of naivety had already been committed when she’d let him bring her here. What difference was a beer going to make? Besides, despite her better judgement, she found she trusted Ben, inexplicably so, considering everything she knew about him. She couldn’t help feeling safe here with him.

“Okay.”

Ben rummaged for a moment before pulling out two cans of Budweiser and offering one to her. She took it from him and watched as he opened his before sinking down onto one of the couches. Rey circled the little aluminium ring-pull with her fingertip for a moment before prising it up and taking a quick sip of the resultant foam. 

Ben had left her plenty of room to sit down beside him, but after the adrenaline of the sidesaddle bike journey she felt far too antsy to do anything but shuffle her feet on the spot, her eyes moving back and forth between the stars, her beer can and Ben in turn. It was a small consolation to see that he seemed just as unsure of where to land his gaze as she was, despite the nonchalant way he leaned back on the couch, his elbow cocked to rest on the arm.

“What made you want to hang out tonight?” she asked, using the pretext of examining the hanging kettle to move around the firepit and stretch thin the feeling of tension which had begun to settle between them. From the other side of the ashes, Ben shrugged. 

“I told you I’d see you sometime.”

He had said that, Rey remembered, the last time she’d seen him before he’d shown up in the roses beneath her bedroom window. He had been in handcuffs then, being escorted down the front steps of the school by two police officers, headed for their waiting squad car. Like the rest of the school, all Rey had been able to do was watch as he was led away from the building, past where she stood at the bottom of the steps gripping her grey, canvas satchel. 

At the last moment, his gaze had slipped to the side and lighted on her. Before the officers had been able to react, he’d twisted out of their grip and come face to face with her, dipping his chin low until only inches had separated them. His eyes had fixed on hers, fierce and intense, as though he’d been willing her to understand something, but the officers had acted swiftly, wrapping unyielding hands around his biceps and tugging him away before he could say whatever it was brimming on his lips. 

“I’ll see you sometime,” he’d told her instead, craning his neck to keep his eyes on hers as he was led away. 

Dumbfounded, Rey had just gripped her bag tighter and watched his dark head as it was forced down, beneath the drip moulding of the Ford’s rear door. She hadn’t understood what was going on at the time, or why he’d had such a reaction to seeing her. It wasn’t until the rumours had started circulating that things had become clearer. 

It had been lunchtime when Ben had been taken away, and the first whispers about what had happened had already begun circulating before the bell had rung for classes to resume. Rey had sat dazedly in Algebra that afternoon, listening to Kaydel Connix telling Jessika Pava that Principal Skywalker had been seen leaving his office with a black eye and split lip, just after the police had arrested Ben. Assault, that was the charge everyone seemed to assume was being pressed, although Rey’s friend Finn had told her that he’d heard it from Poe Dameron that it was _aggravated_ assault and that Ben had been caught wielding a splintered chair leg like a medieval broadsword. Rey wasn’t sure she believed _that_. Poe was known to elaborate.

What had been more convincing was what she’d found out a few days later, that Ben had been called into the Principal’s office because he’d been accused of stealing one of Dr Ackbar’s test papers. Rey had felt her heart plummet when she’d heard the news. She knew exactly where the test papers were kept: in the Tutor Centre, barely more than a few feet away from the table where she’d helped him study once a week for the past month. She’d always thought he was too smart to need tutoring.

“I was expecting it to be in daylight,” she replied curtly. Her voice sounded frosty from the fingers of cold irritation which had crept through her at the memory of how they’d parted, and she dipped her head quickly to take another gulp of beer. Ben’s full lips pressed together and he had the good grace to look down at his hands as he shifted a little on the old, red leather, a muscle twitching beneath his left eye. Rey took a deep breath and fixed her gaze on her own fingers, curling both hands around the cylindrical Budweiser can. 

When Ben didn’t speak again, Rey cleared her throat and asked, “What have you been doing, you know, since…?” She trailed off, not sure whether questions were the best way to fill the silence after all. 

Ben frowned. “Not much: a bit of work for Snoke, hanging out here.”

Snoke. Rey wrinkled her nose before she could stop herself. She knew the name; everyone in town did. His private lettings business had premises on Main Street and its sixteen-spoked emblem seemed to be plastered on billboards and For Rent signs all over the place. No one seemed all that sure where he’d come from but, a few years ago, he’d started buying up more and more property across the town, first on the outskirts then, gradually, closer and closer to the centre. Maz said that half of the restaurants and shops in the town square must be paying him dues by now. Rey couldn’t imagine what use he possibly had for a seventeen year old like Ben.

“What kind of work?”

The frown deepened on Ben’s forehead and Rey could have sworn she saw his shoulders harden. 

“Security.”

Whatever ‘security’ meant, Rey decided on the spot that she didn’t like it. It gave her a distinctly bad feeling, which was not at all negated by Ben’s body language as he pushed himself up from the couch and stalked around her towards the edge of the ridge. She watched the dark outline of him come to a stop against the backdrop of stars, his black Adidas trainers planted firmly on a flat outcropping of rock. The hand that wasn’t holding his beer lifted to run through his hair. Rey had seen that motion before; he did it when he was thinking, trying to puzzle something out, or when he was avoiding answering one of her questions. Of course, her questioning had always been about Physics before, rather than whatever shady business he’d been involved in since being expelled.

Rey nibbled at her lip, wondering whether to press the conversation or just retreat. Her gaze lighted on the wheel of Ben’s abandoned bike where it was visible just outside the camp. She wasn’t going anywhere, not without him, and although she wasn’t an expert in ‘hanging out’, she hazarded a guess that it didn’t usually mean sitting separately and not talking. Setting her jaw in a determined line, she followed Ben out to the edge of the ridge.

His eyes were fixed on the horizon when she looked up at him, his beer can hanging limply by his side. Rey let her attention join his, tracing the line of the river down below as it wove its way through the valley.

“Where is that?” she asked, nodding towards the closest bundle of lights marking a town.

“Tatooine,” Ben replied simply, before stooping to add, “Look, you can see the Cantina sign, just there.” 

Rey peered along the line of his outstretched arm, following the point of his forefinger, until she saw the tiny rectangle of neon yellow. 

“Oh, I know that place,” she said, a smile forming on her lips. “My friends and I eat there sometimes.”

“I know,” Ben said, straightening. Rey’s eyebrows flew up and she twisted her neck to look up at him curiously. “I’ve seen you there,” he explained gruffly in response. “You used to order those ridiculous blue bubblegum milkshakes.”

 _She’d_ seen _him_ there before, months ago, when she, Finn and Rose used to go there at weekends and make a round of milkshakes and fries last them close to two hours. That had been before she’d got the job working for Unkar Plutt, back when she’d still had time to socialise, and _long_ before Ben had approached her about tutoring. He’d always been with his friends, the group of them sprawled out across the two largest booths at the far end of the diner, warding off anyone who approached with their dirty looks. He’d never spoken to her, never even acknowledged her, and until just a moment ago, she’d had no reason to believe he’d ever noticed her there at all. 

Apparently, he had.

“They’re really good,” Rey grumbled quietly into her can. 

“They look disgusting.”

“They’re sweet.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, and I suppose _you_ like black coffee with no sugar.”

Ben just looked at her with an enigmatic smile, before turning and walking away. 

The space gave Rey the chance to breathe and get a welcome handle on her heartbeat, which had started skipping irrationally while they talked. It was a revelation, to realise that Ben had known who she was before he’d been told to approach her for tutoring, that he’d even noticed what her favourite milkshake was. He’d never spoken to her before the day he’d found her at her locker and handed her the scribbled note from Dr Ackbar, and she’d always assumed that he’d only done so begrudgingly. 

This, though… This made her wonder what else she’d assumed wrongly about him.

When she joined him back by the firepit, Ben had set his beer aside and cleared away an area of ashes at the centre of the circle. With practiced fingers, he built up a little pile of twigs, then began balancing larger sticks on top of them in a wigwam. Rey sank down into one of the camp chairs to watch, putting her beer can down in the round, mesh drinks holder.

“How’s school?” Ben asked, keeping his eyes on his work as he pulled a lighter out of his jeans pocket and lit the kindling. The spindly twigs caught at once, consuming the little wooden structure in orange flames. They licked upwards through the air, caressing the bottom of the hanging kettle. Ben hissed with irritation and pulled the sleeve of his hoodie down over his hand, using it to swing the kettle out of the way before the fire could heat the metal too much.

Rey wasn’t sure whether he really wanted to hear about school or whether he was just making an effort to fill the silence he’d left when he’d walked away. Either way, she appreciated the gesture.

“It’s fine. Everyone’s just busy getting ready for the SATs.”

Ben shifted back a little to sit on the earthy ground, picking up a long stick with a soot-blackened end from nearby to poke the fire with. It had obviously been used for that same purpose before and when pulled out of the flames again, it smouldered red for a moment before fading to ashy white.

“I bet that’s keeping you busy in the Tutor Centre,” he offered, glancing up at her with a small curl at the edges of his lips. Rey didn’t return the smile, looking down at her knees instead.

“I’m not tutoring anymore, actually.”

When Ben spoke again, he sounded annoyed and a quick peek at the frown on his forehead confirmed Rey’s suspicions. 

“They didn’t try to blame you for—”

“No,” she replied quickly, “I just decided to concentrate on my own studies for a while.” She felt his eyes searching her face with that familiar intensity before he seemed to relax back into himself. 

“And how’s that going?”

Rey’s eyebrows rose as she considered the question. 

“Alright, I suppose,” she said, her short fingernail sliding beneath the ring pull of her can and letting it go again with a small, metallic ping. “I’m trying to get some revision in every evening after work, but it’s getting to the point where I feel like I’ve done everything I can do. Now I just have to wait.”

“Frustrating,” Ben sympathised.

Rey shrugged. “I’m good at waiting. Although I’m going to try for Early Action if I can,” she added.

Ben reached out for his beer and took a long drink from the can. Rey’s eyes lingered on the way his lips wrapped around the cold aluminium. When he was done, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, as though conscious of her gaze there. She quickly dropped her attention back to the flickering flames. They had begun to die down now, and Ben seemed to notice too, as he leaned forward, picked up one of the thicker sticks from the pile beside the pit and tossed it into the heart of the fire.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. “For college? And after?”

Rey didn’t need to think about her answer; she’d discussed the subject at length with her advisors at school.

“I’m going to major in Accounting. My Math grades are good enough and, if I take some business classes too, I should be able to get a good job once I get my degree.” 

Ben had put his stoking stick back down at the edge of the firepit and was holding his hands in front of his raised knees, his beer dangling limply from the fingers of one. He was sitting at a slight angle to Rey, and he didn’t have to tilt his head much to look up at her. Even before he spoke, Rey felt exposed under his scrutiny. 

“That isn’t what I asked,” he said, his eyes glinting with challenge in the flickering firelight. “I asked what you _want_ to do.” 

Rey felt her hackles prickle at his direct, accusatory tone, as though she’d just been caught in a lie, even though that was preposterous. What did he know about what she wanted to study at college?

“What makes you think I don’t want to do that?”

Ben drew in a breath; Rey watched his broad chest expand inside his layers of clothes. 

“I just don’t think it is,” he replied. “I know what you look like when you care about something, and you don’t look like you care about Accounting at all.”

“How do you know what I look like when I care about something?” she threw back, resisting the urge to cross her arms defensively across her chest. She shifted in her seat instead, and primly tucked one knee over the other one.

“Because it’s what you looked like when you were telling me about physics,” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Whenever you started talking about the laws of science, your eyes lit up. When you talk about Accounting, you just look resigned.”

Rey’s lips fell apart as she met his steady gaze. He didn’t give the impression that he was trying to get one over on her or make her feel uncomfortable, just that he was speaking the truth as he saw it. It was an open, honest kind of intensity that made Rey feel all the more uncomfortable for its guilelessness. She caught the skin of her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled for a moment, breaking eye contact as she thought about her response. 

“I have to think about my future,” she said finally, the argument sounding rather limp, even to herself. 

“Why do you think you have to have a future which makes you miserable?”

“I don’t think Accounting will make me miserable,” Rey retorted, suddenly feeling rather protective of the career she’d chosen. Okay, so it might not be the most exciting of life plans, but it would stop her ever having to go back to living in the kind of poverty she’d known as a child, and Ms Holdo seemed to think it would be a good fit for her. Despite her lavender hair and flowy, sheer blouses, Rey had always thought of Holdo as incredibly sensible and dazzlingly intelligent — a role model. Why shouldn’t she trust her opinion on this?

“I do,” Ben said. 

Rey glared at him. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Maybe,” he admitted, with a little nod of his head. “Maybe I understand more than you think.”

Rey eyed him sternly, her lips pursed into a line. However, she couldn’t quite resist the temptation to ask, “Understand what?”

“What it’s like trying to live up to other people’s expectations of you,” he said, slowly lifting his can for another sip of beer, his eyes remaining fixed on her over the metal rim. 

Rey felt her steely expression falter. It was hard, having to hold herself up to the level expected of her by her teachers, her employers, Maz. Even her friends, who she loved more than anyone else in the world, seemed to think of her as some kind of supergirl, holding down two jobs whilst studying for her SATs _and_ somehow still finding time to help them with their revision. At first, it had been her own determination to succeed, survive, which had pushed her to learn how to juggle everything, but somewhere along the line it had all just started being expected of her and, honestly, it was _exhausting_. 

Everyone seemed certain that she would get a scholarship to the University of Hosnian Prime with ease, room with her friends, and graduate four years later with an Honours degree in Accounting, ready to walk into a nice, stable career, regardless of whether it was what she really wanted. Rey had never told any of them the terrifying thought which had been plaguing her for months: what if I can’t?

She’d tried to broach the subject with Finn and Rose, asking what they thought would happen to their friendship if they all ended up at different colleges, but they’d just told her not to worry about it, that they had faith in her. The issue which Rey couldn’t tell them without sounding boastful was that she didn’t doubt her ability, just her willpower to see it through. Could she really keep pushing herself like she had been doing, when all she could see was monotony and murky resignation waiting for her at the end of her journey? Ben was the first person who’d ever hinted that her worries might have legitimacy.

Ben, who came from a good family. Ben, who’d never had to worry about where his next meal was coming from or where he’d have to live when he turned eighteen. Ben, who’d slacked off in class despite his inherent intelligence, broken school rules like they were there to be ridiculed and used _her_ goodwill and work ethic to steal the test which had got him expelled. 

“And I suppose your advice is to just do whatever you want, no matter who gets hurt in the process?”

Ben’s eyebrows drew together in a pained expression, his lips hanging slightly apart and his whisky-brown eyes wide and regretful. Rey immediately regretted the spikey accusation in her tone, but it was too late to take it back. Instead, she just swallowed and watched as Ben closed his mouth, worked his jaw, as though trying to think of what to say, and eventually looked away from her.

“You deserve to be able to do what makes you happy, that’s all,” he said quietly, stiffly. Rey felt terrible.

“What makes _you_ happy?” she asked, by way of an olive branch. 

He sat still for a moment and she watched the way his fingertips pressed white marks into his opposite wrist as he held his arms around his knees. She worried that he wasn’t going to respond to her, and she’d just started to nibble uncomfortably at her lip when his hand unclasped so he could lift his beer can to his mouth again to take a drink. It gave Rey the impression he was playing for time while he thought about the answer to her question, so she stayed silent, waiting.

“I like reading,” he said eventually. “I wanted to major in English Lit.”

Rey felt her eyebrows rise. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was expecting Ben to say, but it certainly hadn’t been that. It was incongruous, somehow, to imagine this giant, brooding bad boy poring over a dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre. 

The incredulity must have shown on her face because, when Ben glanced up at her, he snorted and said, “What? You don’t believe me?” 

“No,” she said quickly. She had been trying to repair the mood by asking what he liked, not destroy it even further. “I just never got that impression from you, you know, at school.”

Ben’s eyes roamed over her face, making Rey feel, not for the first time that night, as though her integrity was being appraised. 

“Well, like you said,” he conceded, “we don’t really know each other.”

Rey blinked. It was the truth and she had said so first but, for some reason, hearing Ben vocalise it made her feel uncomfortable, as though he was pointing out an error which needed correcting.

“Right,” she agreed lamely, then added, in an attempt to address the problem, “So what’s your favourite book?”

Again, he didn’t reply straight away, and Rey couldn’t shake the sensation that each stretch of silence was Ben judging whether she was worthy of being let in behind his walls. 

“The Great Gatsby.”

“I’ve never read it,” Rey replied, shaking her head self-consciously.

“You should.” 

“What’s it about?” she asked. 

“It’s about how what our society perceives as happiness is really just superficial, and the disillusionment of realising that, whilst trying to hold onto hope.” He paused, a heartened look sneaking over his face. “I’ll lend you my copy if you like.”

Rey gave a small smile in return, her stomach wriggling unbidden beneath the weight of his open gaze. “Okay. Yes. I’d like that.”

He gave a slow nod and, with it, an agreement was made. Rey felt some of the tension lift from between them and she shifted in her chair again, planting both of her feet back on the ground and picking up her beer can to take a sip. The Budweiser bubbles were popping on her tongue when she remembered something he’d said. 

“What did you mean, you _wanted_ to major in English Lit?” 

Three vertical, little frown lines appeared between her eyebrows and she lowered the can down to rest on the thigh. Ben shifted uncomfortably and placed his beer to one side so he could lean forward and pick up his stick again. 

“Yeah,” he said, stoking the fire and causing a little cascade of sparks to rain outwards like a Roman fountain when a pocket of sap caught light in one of the logs. “Turns out they like you to graduate high school before you go to college.” He gave a huff of wry laughter, although his expression stayed cynical. “Who knew, huh?”

The frown only deepened on Rey’s forehead.

How many times in her life had Rey felt like she wanted to give up, throw in the towel and just stop fighting? More times than she could count, that was for sure, but she had always found a way to pick herself up by her bootstraps, brush herself down and get on with whatever needed to be done. She’d had to learn how to be strong and resilient, she’d had to learn to be resourceful and to make the best of each bad situation. Okay, so Ben had been expelled, but that didn’t mean he had to just roll over and give up on his future. She might not feel like she had the luxury of chasing after her dreams, but she didn’t accept Ben’s brand of resignation as an acceptable response to life’s challenges either.

“What, so you’re just going to give up?”

Ben shrugged, adding another log to the fire. “I’ve got other stuff going on now.”

“Your ‘work’?” she scoffed. 

“Yeah,” he replied.

Rey hardly thought that running errands for Snoke warranted him giving up on college, and she was on the verge of telling him so when Ben abruptly stood up and walked away, leaving her to stare after him, nonplussed. Her eyes followed him as he loped back over to the cooler and rummaged inside for another can of beer, which he prised open with a little fizz. The sound was engulfed by the crackling of the fire. Ben covered the opening he’d made with his lips and noisily sucked up the foam which bubbled out, his shoulder still angled towards Rey. She glanced at the can he’d left nestled in the dirt close to where he’d been sitting; she was sure it was still half-full.


End file.
